GearQ privacy policy
Plain-English version · last updated 12 November 2026 (draft)
1. Who we are
GearQ (gearq.app) is run by Daniel Gosling, trading as GearQ. We follow the Australian Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988. Questions, access or correction requests: [email protected].
GearQ is independent software. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Scouts Australia or any Scouts branch.
2. In short: what GearQ stores, and what it never stores
GearQ is only for managing gear. It holds as little about people as it can.
| What | Stored? |
|---|---|
| Name, email and phone number of the person booking gear | Yes — only so the quartermaster can contact them about that booking. Anonymised 12 months after the booking ends. |
| A gear loan agreement, when gear is borrowed for something other than the group's own Scouting (personal use, another group or organisation) | Yes — who it is for (e.g. "Personal use" or a group's name), the borrower's typed name as their signature, when they signed, and the exact agreement text they accepted. The typed name is anonymised with the booking, 12 months after it ends. |
| Name and email of quartermasters and helpers your group invites | Yes — so they can sign in. |
| Name, email and phone of an adult asking an activity team for support | Yes — only so the team can reply about that event. The request also holds how many youth and leaders are coming (numbers only, never names). Anonymised 12 months after the event. |
| Your group's gear: items, quantities, serial numbers, maintenance notes, photos you upload | Yes — that's the service. |
| Medical details, allergies, dietary needs | Never |
| Children's details (names, ages, photos, sections they belong to) | Never — bookings are made by adults |
| Dates of birth, home addresses, member or registration numbers | Never |
| Anything from Scouts membership systems (Extranet, Operoo or similar) | Never — GearQ has no connection to them, and never imports anyone's personal details on your behalf. The spreadsheet import only accepts gear. |
| Network address and country in the security log (sign-ins, refused requests, exports, password resets) | Yes — only to detect misuse such as password guessing. Only GearQ's operator sees it. Deleted after 90 days. |
| Card numbers | Never — payments go straight to Stripe. |
| Advertising or tracking data | Never — no analytics, advertising or tracking scripts. Fonts are served from gearq.app itself. |
Notes fields are for gear. The booking forms say "Gear notes only — please don't include medical, personal or contact details", and the quartermaster's view flags notes that look like they contain an email address, a phone number or medical details so they can be edited out.
3. What we collect, in more detail
- Group details — group name, district, web address, colours and logo, and the quartermaster's name and email.
- Bookings — the name, email and phone number of the person booking gear (used only to contact them about that booking), the section, the dates, the gear, and any notes they add.
- Named logins — the name and email of any quartermaster or helper your group invites, and of a branch admin the operator sets up for a branch's activity teams.
- Support requests — when a group asks an activity team for gear or helpers: the requester's name, email and phone, the event name, dates and venue, the requesting group, how many youth and leaders are coming (counts only), and any notes and replies. The requester gets a private status link to see the team's reply or cancel; it never shows contact details, only a scrambled (hashed) copy of it is stored, and it stops working 30 days after the event.
- Gear records — items, quantities, serial numbers, maintenance notes, return notes and any photos you upload.
- Billing — your plan and payment status, and Stripe's reference numbers for your customer and subscription.
- Security logs — every sign-in (successful or not), requests that were refused, data exports, password resets and logo uploads, with the time, the kind of login, the network (IP) address and the country Cloudflare reports. Used only to detect and investigate misuse; seen only by GearQ's operator; the address and country are deleted after 90 days. Plus a record of who changed what in your group (its own activity log).
- Security reports — if you use the "Report a security issue" form, your message and (only if you give it) a reply email. Seen only by GearQ's operator; deleted 12 months after the report is closed.
GearQ is meant to be used by adults (leaders, quartermasters and parents). People making bookings must be 18 or over.
4. Your gear is never public
A list of what a group owns and where it's kept is useful to thieves, so GearQ never publishes it. Gear lists, storage locations, serial numbers, photos and bookings are only shown after signing in with the group's password. Group pages are hidden from search engines, the public website only shows made-up example gear, and a district or region can only see counts (never locations, serial numbers or who booked), and only if the group chooses to share.
5. Why we use it
- To run your group's booking page and quartermaster dashboard.
- To send booking confirmations, approvals, reminders and account emails (from [email protected]).
- To bill your group's plan and to give support when you ask for it.
- To keep the service secure: automatic monitoring reads the security log every 15 minutes to spot password guessing, snooping between groups, unusual downloads and data going missing, and alerts GearQ's operator.
We don't sell your data, we don't use it for advertising, and we don't share it with other groups or districts unless your group chooses a sharing level that allows it. At the "Totals" level, a district sees counts (for example "3 canoes"), never names or contact details. If a district asks to borrow gear, the requester's name, email and (optional) phone go only to the lending group's quartermaster.
6. Who can see it
- Your group's quartermaster(s) and helpers you invite.
- The person who made a booking (through their own edit link).
- For a support request: the activity team's quartermasters, the branch admin for that branch, and the person who asked (through their status link, which shows the request and reply, not contact details). Branch viewers only ever see counts.
- People with your group's member password see the name and section on other bookings in the group's booking calendar (so everyone knows who has the gear) — never their email or phone.
- GearQ's operator, only to support your group or keep the service running. The security log and security alerts are seen by the operator only — never by other groups, districts or regions.
- Our service providers (sub-processors), only to run GearQ: Cloudflare (hosting, database, backups and email sending) and Stripe (payments).
7. Where it's kept
GearQ runs on Cloudflare. Its database (Cloudflare D1) runs in Cloudflare's Asia-Pacific region. That is not guaranteed to be inside Australia, and Cloudflare's network serves pages from data centres around the world. Stripe processes payments in its own systems, which may be outside Australia. Both protect data to standards comparable to the Australian Privacy Principles.
8. How long we keep it
- The name, email and phone number of a person booking gear are anonymised 12 months after the booking ends (an automatic daily job). The booking itself stays as gear history (dates and items, no person). Return records are anonymised the same way, and copies of emails GearQ sent are deleted after 12 months.
- The name, email and phone number on a support request are anonymised 12 months after the event, by the same daily job. Its status link stops working 30 days after the event.
- While your group uses GearQ, we keep its gear data so the service works.
- If a group's plan lapses, the data stays (read-only) so you can come back or download it. After 2 years with no active plan, we delete it, emailing the quartermaster a warning at least 30 days beforehand.
- Failed sign-in records are cleared after about a day; sign-in sessions expire on their own.
- Security log: the network address and country are deleted after 90 days; the rest of each entry (time, kind, which group) after about 13 months. The per-group activity log and a group's sign-up record keep their network address for now — we're working on an expiry for those.
- Backups are kept for up to 30 days (daily) and 12 months (one per month), then replaced.
- Billing records are kept as long as tax law requires.
9. Your choices
- Ask us to see, correct or delete personal information about you: email [email protected]. A quartermaster can also edit or remove booking details directly.
- A group can download its gear list at any time, and can ask us to delete the whole group.
10. Security
Passwords are stored scrambled (hashed), never as plain text. Every group's data is kept separate, and every request is checked against the group it belongs to. Sign-in attempts are limited. All traffic is encrypted. GearQ is monitored automatically every 15 minutes; alerts go to GearQ's operator only, and groups are never emailed automatically by the monitoring. If we confirm a data breach that touches your group's data, we'll tell your quartermaster within 72 hours of confirming it, and if it's likely to cause serious harm we'll also tell the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and the people affected, as the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme requires. More detail: Security & data handling.
11. Complaints
Email [email protected] and we'll reply within 30 days. If you're not happy with our answer, you can contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.
12. Changes
If we change this policy in a way that matters, we'll email your group's quartermaster before it takes effect.